Oswestry21

SHOPPING FOR FRESH FOOD IN OSWESTRY

A  year long study of fresh foods in Oswestry undertaken by OS21 has shown that fresh fruit and veg. are cheaper in the Powis Hall Market than in Sainsbury’s and Morrisons. Meat is more expensive in independent butchers, but invariably comes from local sources, and food is more heavily packaged in the supermarkets.   

 Fig. 1 The mean price in £ per kilo of 12 items of fresh Fruit and Veg. is consistently lower in the Market and Covent Garden when compared to Sainsbury’s and Morrisons (more…)

Don’t forget the now rejuvenated monthly Farmer’s Market is this Friday, 25th June, at the Bailey Head.

The star attraction will be a cooking demonstration from around 10 am by Oswestry’s inimitable Walls Restaurant. Exactly what they will show us is a bit of a mystery but its going to be delicious! There will be tit bits cooked on site to relish for free and to buy, plus home made jams and chutneys etc…

Yes, the weather really helps - but with so many great new stalls,  any market day at  Bailey Head really is the best place to shop. Inside the market and out, you’ll find the best of everything.

Market manager David Clough has announced that there will be up to 15 stalls at this Friday’s (30th April) Farmer’s Market in the Bailey Head in Oswestry. A perfect time to shop for fresh and regional goods for the Bank Holiday weekend ….

How has this renewal of the Farmer’s Market happened? New traders have been invited to Oswestry’s market and some popular traders are returning - and so long as we show up and enjoy their goods this will continue. Farmers markets are still the best place for top end local produce, the like of which you won’t find in any supermarket. See you there!

Here’s a reminder of how good it can be.

As the Civic Society, CPRE, Chamber of Trade and OS21 coalition poster and leafletting campaign starts to become apparent, here’s a reminder of what a busy town market can look like. And hey! It’s Oswestry 18 years ago in 1992. Not only is it interesting to see how many stalls there are, both in the Horsemarket and the Bailey square, but it’s interesting to see that only 18 years ago people were prepared to get off their arses and actually walk 200 yards from the Oak St. car park to the Powis Hall. One of the moans about having a bigger market and more stalls now is “But where will everyone park?”. Oak St. car park! Get a bit of excercise why not, while you go and buy fresh food at the Powis Hall! The walk can’t be any longer than the walk from the end of a superstore car park to the sliding doors.

Markets have a future: market town centre regeneration, local food hubs, supporters of local food suppliers, small business start ups, food miles, social cohesion, shopping as a social experience, tourism, wide variety and choice, value, quality, food provenance and knowledge ……. endless reasons why the direction that the economy is heading and the forces that are shaping society both cry out for active investment in, and management and promotion of town markets.

And until councils and highway authorities start to realise that town centres are for people, and people have legs, then we will continue to destroy town centre vitality by building supermarket retail parks with vast car parks where shoppers are happy to traipse about all day for miles, but claim that walking 200 yds in a town centre is too far.

A recent news article in the ‘Tizer reported that Sainsbury’s in Oswestry has started handing out free storage containers to customers to ‘help people do their bit to reduce the amount of food that goes to waste’.

      Laudable though this initiative may appear, it is somewhat ironic given the role that supermarkets play in creating food waste. Each year, up to 20 million tonnes of food are wasted in the UK, and most waste occurs before food even gets into our homes. British farmers are forced to waste millions of tonnes of fruit and veg before they even leave the farm, simply because the produce does not meet the strict cosmetic standards stipulated by supermarkets.

     Within homes, consumers bin around £12 billion of groceries each year, including nearly 100,000 tonnes of poultry meat. One major cause of food waste within homes is date-labelling, which confuses customers.

      Sell-by dates, which supermarkets use for stock control, have nothing to do with food safety.

      Best-before dates, which are supposedly for quality control purposes, are overused and often unnecessary; it’s obvious when fruit and veg, for example, are past their best.

     Even use-by dates are abused, as manufacturers set dates far in advance of when the food is likely to go off.

     Another source of food waste is supermarket bogof (buy one, get one free) offers or, even worse, buy three for the price of two, which encourage customers to buy far more fresh produce than they can realistically use before the excess starts to rot in the fridge or fruit bowl.  Consumers are essentially paying supermarkets for the privilege of throwing away excess supermarket stock, and thus saving the supermarkets the cost of doing so.

      Fortunately, shoppers in Oswestry can evade sell-by, best-before, bogof and other corporate chicanery by purchasing fresh produce from independent local food shops and market stalls, who will sell the exact amount you need – and offer free advice on what’s in season / the best cut of meat for a particular recipe, etc. 

Poor old supermarkets - they try and tell us that they can supply us with everything. But if you like your produce local, if you like your food fresh, if you like to make things yourself, if you shop for surprise and not out of habit, if you like old things, if you read books, if life is a sense of discovery, if you have imagination, if you like people and talking and if you just enjoy what life brings every different day, then supermarkets come nowhere.

As Leonard Cohen wrote, and sang “There’s a crack in everything - that’s how the light gets in”. If you like it hermetically sealed, stick to the supermarket. If you like the cracks and the light - use your market. They are and will be important places - social spaces, food hubs, centres of local identity, small business start up opportunities, focus of market town regeneration etc. If we lose sight of that, and there is no investment & interest in town centre independents & markets, then we lose the small things that matter and hand the whole production, retail and consumption game to a monopoly of supermarket majors.

All these images where taken on one day in Powis Hall market, Oswestry. It was an exceptionally bright, light and sunny day.